1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to designing, simulating and configuring digital devices, modules and systems, and in particular, to methods and systems for computer-aided design, simulation, and configuration of digital devices, modules and systems described by a hardware description language (HDL) model.
2. Description of the Related Art
The above-referenced patent application introduces a configuration specification language that permits a designer to define configuration constructs called Dials in order to provide an interface through which the latches of a digital design may be conveniently read and set. A number of different types of Dials may be defined and instantiated within the digital design, and the various types of Dial instances may be accessed during simulation, laboratory testing, and field deployment of the digital design in order to set and read the configuration of the digital design.
Various relationships between Dial instances may also be defined. For example, as described in the above-referenced application, a Control Dial (or CDial) instance is a Dial instance having a controlling relationship with one or more hierarchically related lower-level child Dial instances controlled by the CDial instance. That is, the CDial instance has an input/output relationship with one or more lower level child Dial instances according to which the output of the CDial instance controls the input settings of one or more lower level child Dial instances.
Dial instances may also be aggregated into configuration constructs referred to as Dial groups. Grouping of Dial instances into Dial group instances ensures that any set operation affecting Dial instances within a Dial group instance will fail unless the set operation is performed for every Dial instance in the Dial group instance. The configuration constraints enforced by Dial group instances promote coherent configuration of the digital design.
The present invention recognizes that, in addition to these defined relationships between Dial instances, it would be useful and desirable to permit the definition of additional relationships between Dial instances that may or may not be causative (as is the relationship of a CDial instance to its child Dial instances) or restrictive (as is the relationship between Dial instances within a Dial group instance). For example, the present invention recognizes that it would be useful to define a relationship between Dial instances to alert diagnostic or other software examining Dial instance values that a predefined or designer-defined relationship exists between two Dial instances in order to enhance understanding of the operation of the digital design.